Elon Musk has filed updated counterclaims against Twitter accusing it of security lapses. They are based on claims by the platform's former head of security that the company covered up serious flaws in the social media company's data security.

Elon Musk's legal team filed a public version of their updated counterclaims on Thursday in response to the Twitter lawsuit. The amended argument is based on claims by former Twitter security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko who reported on alleged security vulnerabilities at the company. The Delaware judge overseeing the case ruled that Musk's team could update their claims based on the whistleblower's disclosure.

In the amended counterclaims, Musk's team argued that the Zatko disclosure and events related to it “have revealed that the misrepresentations regarding mDAU [monetizable daily active users] were only one component of a broader conspiracy among Twitter executives to deceive the public, its investors, and the government about the dysfunction at the heart of the company,” as quoted by CNN.

The new allegations are added to the existing ones that Twitter misrepresented the number of fake and spam accounts on its platform and used the mDAU to publicly report its growth using other metrics within the company. The new filing also points to allegations by Zatko that Twitter suffers information security vulnerabilities, that it has infringed intellectual property rights to run some of its key features, and that it has violated a 2011 Federal Trade Commission consent decree.

“Those previously concealed problems are, according to Zatko, so severe that Zatko […] concluded that they threaten US national security and democracy itself,” the filing states.

© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.

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